Republican Presidential Candidates

From her computer in Anchorage, Sharon Pipino hits the "send" button once a month, and delivers another $25 to Barack Obama's presidential campaign. "I just can't help myself," Pipino said with a chuckle. A massage therapist who had never made a campaign donation until this year, she added: "If I have some left over at the end of the month, I send him more." She has made at least four donations totaling $164.21.

Ronald Spiggle, Democratic county chairman in Appomattox County, Va., has not voted for a Democratic presidential candidate since 1980. But he plans to vote for the party's gubernatorial nominee, Douglas Wilder, on Nov. 7. What's more, Spiggle is confident that Wilder, a black, will carry Appomattox County, where the war between the states ended. The county went for George Bush by 2 to 1 last November. "Most people think he's a moderate who will keep the state programs going," Spiggle says.

Pierre du Pont could use a turn on the boards as Stanley Kowalski. Paul Simon seems better suited at present as Pee-wee Herman's father. Jesse Jackson needs to commit to consonants. And most of the Republican presidential candidates should start humming in their spare time if they want to catch voters' attention. And Tom Brokaw should consider a run at the Oval Office.

In Grovers Mill, N. J., the committee commemorating the 50th anniversary of the famous "War of the Worlds" radio broadcast wants to sponsor a presidential debate next year. In Georgia, the Republican Party of Catoosa County--where the Confederate Army at Chickamauga won one of its last major victories of the Civil War--would like to hold a debate by Republican presidential candidates.

Republican presidential candidates Rick Perry, Mitt Romney and Jon Huntsman Jr. weighed in on the crumbling of the Kadafi regime in Libya. FOR THE RECORD: An earlier version of this article and its headline incorrectly said that Moammar Kadafi's regime has fallen. Kadafi has not given up power. Rick Perry: "The crumbling of Muammar Ghadafi's reign, a violent, repressive dictatorship with a history of terrorism, is cause for cautious celebration. The lasting impact of events in Libya will depend on ensuring rebel factions form a unified, civil government that guarantees personal freedoms, and builds a new relationship with the West where we are allies instead of adversaries.

It's not just that they oppose the ideas in President Obama's jobs plan. No, the Republicans in the race to defeat him in 2012 reacted to his speech to a joint session of Congress by saying that the current inhabitant of the Oval Office just simply isn't capable of fixing the nation's economy. "I'm a conservative businessman. And that is what America needs if we're going to get our economy going," Mitt Romney said in an interview on Sean Hannity's radio show. Discussing his own jobs plan, which he released this week, Romney continued that there is "no way" Obama could match it, "because he just doesn't understand it. " His campaign also launched a new Web video Friday arguing that Obama introduced his plan "960 days late.

Are Republicans rushing to President Obama's left when it comes to Afghanistan? Not quite. But as they calibrate their pitch to an increasingly war-weary nation, some of the GOP presidential hopefuls have signaled support for a more significant drawdown plan than the one the president is expected to unveil in a primetime address this evening. That position, still evolving and with varying degrees of nuance, puts the candidates at odds with John McCain, the party's 2008 nominee, who recently warned them against taking an "isolationist" stance.

Though the U.S. presidential primaries are still a year from now, a different sort of contest is underway in Israel. Beginning Saturday, Mississippi Gov. Haley Barbour will be the third potential GOP presidential candidate to visit the Jewish state since the first of the year, and the second during the protests in neighboring Egypt. Barbour will arrive on the heels of Mike Huckabee, who spent much of the week touring the country, and Mitt Romney, who swung through in January. And like Romney and Huckabee, Barbour is expected to meet with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and tour some holy sites.

Cracked and broken Re "Suits could force L.A. to put money into sidewalks," Jan. 31 It's truly a sad state of affairs when it takes a lawsuit to force our city leaders to do the right thing. Sidewalk maintenance is not just a civil rights issue for the disabled; rather, it has been an unresolved issue of poor management by those responsible for getting the job done. We should all be ashamed of ourselves for not demanding that our elected officials find a way to provide funds to maintain our sidewalks.